Rosemary Rowe - The Ghosts of Glevum

‘Oh,’ Parva said lightly, ‘he didn’t tell me that. I heard it from. .’

Sosso stepped forward, interrupting her. ‘Different information. Another sestertius, citizen, I think.’

I had forgotten his presence in the room, but I would have parted with the aureus to hear the rest of this. I took out another coin and pressed it in her hand. ‘You heard it from. .?’

She looked enquiringly at the dwarf, who nodded his permission for her to go on. ‘From one of those two lads up at the other gate the other day. They were complaining because it was so dull out there: nobody had come or gone since they arrived, except one silly handmaiden who kept wanting to go out for remedies and lady Julia’s special messenger. Nobody from outside the house at all, they said, so it was very tedious to be on guard. Better to be on fatigue duty in the garrison, the younger one said — at least cleaning the latrines was something active to do. Then you turned up with your fertiliser cart.’

I thought of all the different ways in which we’d had communication with the villa in the last couple of days, and understood why Sosso smiled. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ I said.

Parva met my eyes. ‘You’d heard about the letter from your patron’s wife — and you have spoken to her since. I didn’t know it mattered who delivered it. It’s the same messenger that she has used throughout.’

Julia had spoken of a messenger who took letters to Corinium and back. Someone with the freedom to come and go. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before? ‘I wonder who it was?’ I muttered aloud.

Cornovacus unwound himself from his post beside the door, and stepped towards the fire. He jerked his head at Parva, and she scuttled off into the darkness, clasping her money to her breast.

‘I can answer that, my fancy friend.’ His eyes were glittering. ‘Soon as I see the colour of that coin.’

I took out a sestertius, but he shook his head. ‘Worth more than that, I think.’ It was outrageous, but I had no choice. I looked at Sosso, but he didn’t look at me. He was picking at his fingernails again.

I offered a denarius instead. Cornovacus tried the coin in his teeth then nodded as if satisfied. He must have put it somewhere, but I didn’t see it go. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I know. I got it from that twitching friend of yours — the one you spoke to near the fish market.’

‘The military secretary with the tic?’

‘That’s him. Crept up behind him in an alleyway and forced him to tell me what he knew. Said I had seen him taking bribes from you and threatened to denounce him to the garrison. That frightened him enough, but when I said I knew what he got up to with unlicensed prostitutes, I thought the wretch would twitch himself to death. Offered me money straight away, so I knew I had him then. Sosso was right.’

‘My suggestion.’ Sosso grinned in answer to my glance. ‘Thought he might be’ — he paused — ‘persuadable.’

‘He talked like Apollo’s fountain after that, non-stop burbling. Mostly it was all about this messenger — it was one of the slaves arrested at the feast. They had him in for questioning and then they let him go. I don’t know exactly how it was arranged, and neither did your frightened little friend — he couldn’t tell me, even when I picked him up and shook him like a leaf — though he thinks that sums of money were involved. All I know is, someone intervened on his behalf — that would be your patron, I presume — and the garrison commander agreed to let him go, explicitly to ferry messages, under penalty of being burned alive if he made any effort to escape, or didn’t turn up if wanted at the trial.’

Freeing a potential witness in this way is most irregular, of course, but somehow when it was explained to me like this it didn’t surprise me in the least. In fact, it accorded with what Parva had just said. Any wealthy prisoner would attempt to buy what privilege he could. And Marcus was a very wealthy man. ‘So Marcus managed to bribe the prison governor to let him send a message to his wife — with someone he could trust?’

Cornovacus shrugged. ‘I suppose it meant that military messengers were not involved, if there were any questions later on. Even the accusers were persuaded to agree — Great Mithras, it must have been a whopping bribe! Although Procurator Mellitus doesn’t like it very much. He’s keeping a close watch on the messenger, and insists that he’ll produce him at the trial — but your patron’s very gratified, of course.’

‘So it was convenient to everyone.’

‘Pluto only knows! Money opens doors, that’s all I know.’ Cornovacus had produced the denarius again, and was fingering the silver coin as he spoke, twisting it between his fingers like a conjuror. ‘And the slave had already given what evidence he had about that wretched banquet — not that it amounted to a whore’s dowry anyway. Now that this famous document has come to light, what happened on the evening of the feast doesn’t really matter a moneylender’s curse.’

Legally, the man was right. The murder case was trivial compared to the treason charge. But events that night had mattered to poor Golbo, I thought savagely. They had meant the difference between life and death to him. ‘And what about the other villa slaves, who are still being marched off in tens for questioning?’

Cornovacus pocketed his denarius. ‘Don’t ask me, citizen. I’m not a soothsayer. I only know what I was told. They’re following procedures, I suppose, and hoping for information about that document. That’s all he told me, citizen. You’ve had your money’s worth.’ He turned as if to walk away.

I clutched his ragged sleeve. ‘If this man gave evidence,’ I said, ‘did he mention a name, by any chance? A senior slave called Umbris, possibly?’

He stopped and looked at me. ‘Umbris? The big black Nubian slave? That’s the very man I’m talking of.’

I closed my eyes. Of course. I should have guessed, knowing my patron’s ironic touch with names. Umbris, man of shadow, so called not because he moved so noiselessly, but because he was so dark.

That thought brought another, which I did not like. Umbris had taken a letter to the villa at about the time that Golbo was murdered. Suppose that he spotted the runaway in the woods? Did he follow him to my dye-house and then murder him? For reasons I’d refused to countenance? Julia’s messenger, protecting Julia’s name?

I shuddered, imagining a dark figure that suddenly emerged from the disguising smoke and shadows of the hut, uttering a soothing word or two perhaps, then seizing and wielding the heavy axe. That would account for the astonished look on that grotesque, discoloured face. And the big Nubian had the strength necessary to take a man’s head off with a single blow, and do it at that particular angle too. That was no easy matter, as Molendinarius had pointed out. I was sure I was getting closer to the truth.

‘He was at my roundhouse!’ I exclaimed.

‘Of course he was.’ Lercius misinterpreted my words. ‘I saw him. He’s the one who gave me that message from your slave.’

So Umbris, carrying messages to and from Corinium, had come back to the roundhouse. Not to deliver a message, probably, but to see what had happened to the corpse. That explained the confusion of the message — Umbris had needed to think quickly of a way to explain his presence at my house to Lercius. I nodded. ‘You said at the time that it was dark and shadowy and it was hard to see him. That was because he was dark and shadowy himself?’

‘That’s right, citizen. A big black messenger.’ Lercius came over to the fire and squatted down, while Cornovacus went back to join the dwarf. ‘I’ve got another message, too, but Sosso says I mustn’t tell you till you’ve paid.’